Kentucky’s wobbly path to the NCAA Tournament just got a whole lot more uncertain.
On Monday, coach Mark Pope announced that junior guard Jaland Lowe — the team’s only true point guard, and one of its top transfer additions last summer — will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery.
“We have pushed the envelope on him in every way,” Pope said on his radio show. “We searched, tried every possible reasonable scenario to have him continue on, but just made the wise and right decision today that he’ll go have surgery.”
Lowe appeared in just nine of the Cats’ 16 games to this point, averaging eight points and 2.4 assists in just 18.4 minutes per game.
When he did play, Lowe — a top-15 transfer last offseason, according to The Athletic’s rankings, who earned All-ACC honors at Pitt last season — gave Kentucky (10-6, 1-2 SEC) one of the biggest things it has consistently lacked this season: someone who could consistently run and create offense. That fact has been a huge point of criticism against Pope, who reportedly spent $22 million on Kentucky’s player payroll this season.
Unlike at BYU and last season — when UK finished 10th in adjusted offensive efficiency in Pope’s first year coaching his alma mater — this Kentucky team features little of the shooting or free-flowing movement from Pope’s best offenses. Instead, the Wildcats (10-6, 1-2 SEC) have been blown out by the likes of Gonzaga and Michigan State. Just last week, Kentucky lost to Missouri inside Rupp Arena for the first time.
Kentucky is already on the NCAA Tournament bubble, with a brutal SEC slate still left. Unfortunately for fans, much of the hope that this season could turn around was predicated on the hope that Lowe could play through a shoulder injury that lingered for weeks.
Lowe missed five straight games with the injury in November and early December, before returning in mid-December — with a sizable shoulder brace — and leading UK to its two best wins this season, against Indiana and St. John’s. Against the Red Storm, he was especially dynamic, finishing with 13 points and three assists while wreaking havoc on the Johnnies’ inconsistent defense.
Lowe appeared to re-aggravate the shoulder early on Saturday in UK’s 92-68 win over Mississippi State, and didn’t return after exiting three minutes into the game.
“He’s dislocated his shoulder three times now, and every time it’s been with less and less contact,” Pope said. “He’s tweaked it in games and tweaked it once in practice, to add on top of that.”
Pope said that Lowe will apply for a medical redshirt, meaning he’d have two more full seasons of eligibility.
That, unfortunately, won’t help a Kentucky team that now faces an even steeper uphill climb toward the NCAA Tournament.
